


everything’s been said, but one last thing about the desert...

by celaenos



Category: Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Character Study, F/F, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fic Exchange, Holiday Fic Exchange, One Shot, Original Character(s), Shipoween 2019, Weird West
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-27 00:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21109361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/pseuds/celaenos
Summary: There are monsters in the forest—everyone knows that. What they don’t always know, what people don’t expect, is that the desert holds monsters aplenty, too.





	everything’s been said, but one last thing about the desert...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captainellie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainellie/gifts).

> happy halloween!!
> 
> i hope you enjoy this, it... ballooned and completely changed from what i originally had in mind. i read [this poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48246/rabbits-and-fire) in my daily poetry foundation email and got inspired to shift it with your weird west prompt (and totally pilfered the title from). 
> 
> the attempted rape is very much attempted, and not graphic, but i wanted to be sure that i warned for it. 
> 
> i've never written anything quite like this before, but i really enjoyed it, so thank you for the prompt and the opportunity, i hope you enjoy reading it!

There are monsters in the forest—everyone knows that. What they don’t always know, what people don’t expect, is that the desert holds monsters aplenty, too.

…

…

Grandmother always says that she was born screaming.

She gently places the wailing pink tangle of limbs into her daughter’s exhausted arms and frowns. “She has powerful lungs,” Grandmother says, thoughtful. “This one understands already.”

Grandmother is the one who gives her the nickname Little Red. Sparked by her reddish baby skin, red hot temper, something else that she notes—Red isn’t ever told the truth of it. Her mother calls her Scarlett. Her father generally calls her nothing. She grows into a wiry little thing, a mass of uncombed hair, dirt-caked underneath fingernails and pressed into knobby knees, constantly underfoot in their tiny little cabin. Her mother smiles and presses treats into her palms. Her father barks out about peace and quiet, about manners. Her mother’s shoulders fold in further and further each year that Scarlett grows taller. She wonders once if only one of them can grow at a time, but Mother says that’s nonsense.

The crease on her grandmother’s forehead deepens, but she bites her tongue whenever her son-in-law has a fit.

Scarlett’s green eyes watch it all.

…

…

When Scarlett is just shy of six, her mother dies, in the way that mothers tend to disappear; a shrinking appetite, disease, bruises piling up one over the other until there isn’t any space left over. Any or all of the above, Scarlett isn’t told the truth of it; children don’t need to know such things. All that she is told is that her mother is gone and that she needs to start behaving better, help her grandmother in the kitchen, be quiet when her father comes home from work.

Scarlett watches as her grandmother begins to shrink, in a way that she never could have imagined possible. Nothing about the woman could ever have been described as frail before, but they say that the death of a child forever alters a parent, even when everyone involved is grown.

Her father starts to have more trouble finding steady work; the town that they live in is small and job opportunities are hard to come by, so he has to keep traveling further and further away for weeks at a time.

Whenever he is home, he’s angry. Everything that Scarlett does seems to bother him. She is too loud, or she is too quiet. She is too weak, or she is too unladylike. Scarlett learns to stay out of his way as much as possible, hiding away in the kitchen with her grandmother or playing out in the desert until it’s long past dark.

That’s where she learns.

It’s awful, but—

Jackrabbits scream while they run, burning up and bringing death along with them. When Scarlett is about nine or so, she’s out late one night, further out from the cabin than she is technically allowed to be—she’s been avoiding her father all day—climbing through bushes, and digging up rocks, and poking at lizards with sticks to pass the time. There have been warnings about bush fires for weeks, and she knows not to be out this far, but she does it anyway. The jackrabbit runs past her like it doesn’t know that it’s dying; feet pounding quickly, awful confused wailing, ears bouncing and flame everywhere, lighting up the night. Scarlett backs away, climbs up on top of a tall rock and clamps a hand over her mouth and then changes her mind and tries to cover up her ears. Tries to block out the noise of death, but it follows her home.

That is the first taste that she gets of the horrors the desert has to hold.

…

…

When Scarlett is eleven, her father goes traveling for a job and then never comes back. There’s a strange pang of relief that makes Scarlett feel guilty and stay quiet. Grandmother’s knees haven’t been able to make the trips across town to sell her bread for a long time, and the girl that she hired to do the deliveries for her has gone off and gotten herself pregnant. _Soon to be married, thankfully._ So, Grandmother looks Scarlett up and down, hands on her hips as she sighs. “I guess you’re old enough now,” she decides.

The bite of autumn has long since settled in at night—though Grandmother says that it’s nothing at all like the chill she grew up with back east—so Grandmother knits Scarlett a new cloak for the walk back home. Bright red, with a hood to keep her warm. When she tucks Scarlett into it, pushing the basket into her hands, there’s something soft and sad about her smile. “Remember to keep an eye out for wolves and coyotes.”

“Wolves don’t come out here,” Scarlett says, like she knows anything at all.

Grandmother only raises a single eyebrow in response, then says, “There are shapeshifters and monsters everywhere, in that desert. I’ve told you the old tales. You have to be ready for anything.”

Scarlett rips the cloak off and pushes it deep down into her basket. She learns the path so well that she could probably walk it with her eyes closed, if there was ever a reason to. She’s loved the hot desert since she was little, but she was never allowed to venture much further than the edges of their cabin on her own before now. There is a trail of cactuses that runs along with parts of the path, wild and scattered in a way that Scarlett loves and the prettiest flowers bloom alongside it. The whistle of the wind rips out into the air and Scarlett follows the sound to the next village, kicking rocks and plucking small bouquets for Grandmother along the way.

The routine becomes part of their daily lives. Grandmother bakes early in the mornings while the air isn’t too hot yet and sends Scarlett is off to school, scowling at her teachers and the boys who won’t stop staring at the fat growing slowly on her chest. In the afternoons, Scarlett runs home, throws her cloak into the basket, and heads off into the desert with Grandmother’s bread to sell. She comes home with the cloak wrapped tightly around her, to ward off the ghosts that haunt the desert hills at night.

Grandmother’s customers all know her as Little Red, even though she is beginning to grow like a weed. On the morning of her thirteenth birthday, Scarlett is up before the sun, staring at herself in the mirror. She strips all the way down to nothing, inspecting every inch of her body for changes but she doesn't find a single one; something inside of her feels different all the same. Scarlett suspects it has more to do with how other people look at her now. Their eyes must be able to see something that she can’t. It’s maddening to think about.

When it comes, adolescence hits Scarlett with no warning or ceremony; she simply peels herself out of bed one morning and finds that her body is a different shape, and everything hurts. There are bloodstains on her sheets that leave a sinking shameful feeling in her gut as she scrubs at them furiously, hoping Grandmother won’t wake and see. The rest of her has sprouted out in awkward dimensions, coltish and gangly, taking up space that never belonged to her before. Now there are bruises all over her legs and arms from bumping into things. At first, she slouches. Hunching over, trying to mold herself into the same height as the other girls in school.

Grandmother snaps and tells her to stand tall. It’s harsh and comforting at the same time.

…

…

He’s handsome.

Scarlett jumps when he suddenly walks out into the path, almost as if appearing from nothing, like a mirage. She is so used to being alone out here with nothing more than the animals and the wind, walking into another person is a shock. He is handsome and charming and possesses a wolfish grin—everything that she has been taught to want. Her grandmother’s voice snapping, _manners, _rings out as he begins to chatter away at her. Small talk. Nonsense cues that people exchange in passing for no other reason than ‘manners’ that Scarlett can discern.

She does as she’s been taught: smiles, (if strained) politely answers his questions, (as she tries to make her way along the path) and pretends that she doesn’t notice the way that his gaze lingers at the space where her cloak connects above her breast.

That isn’t anything new. Boys in the other villages do this sometimes, men too, but it’s the first time that Scarlett feels a slow chill creep over her.

He calls her by her name before she gives it. Says that he’s seen her around the village, with her cape and her basket, smelling wonderful as she skips along her route. He tells her where he works as an apprentice, says that he’s going to take over real soon, boasting like the boys in school in a way that seems wrong for a grown man.

“You’re very pretty,” he coos, waiting for her to thank him.

Scarlett’s cheeks burn as she snaps her mouth shut. Shrugging, she gathers her basket and flowers and makes to push her way past him. The wind roars from the canyons somewhere to her left. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone this far off of the path. The brilliant purple flowers in her hand now seem silly and useless.

“I have to get back to my grandmother’s house,” she says, praying that he’ll leave her alone. Instead, he shifts his weight, leaning forward like a bobcat preparing to pounce and Scarlett’s heart beats a frantic staccato in her chest.

The rest of that afternoon never manages to stick properly inside of her brain, no matter how many times she tries to reach for all the pieces.

The bread falls into the dirt, ruined and unable to sell. Scarlett doesn’t remember falling to the dirt with it, but that’s where she ends up. The hood of her cloak drops, rips. The tearing sound cuts through the sough of the rocks and echoes loudly in Scarlett’s ears. Over and over again in her nightmares for years afterward. The dank smell of vultures eating a meal close by is overwhelming and Scarlett gags, coughing and gasping for breath as she tries to kick him away. “Why?” It is a plea, not a question, and he gives her no answer.

Years later, she mainly remembers the howling. Her voice echoing the sound that was ringing off the rocks as he crawled closer towards her. When the coyote suddenly leaps at the man, its maw wide and paws clawing at his face, Scarlett scrambles away from them both gasping. She climbs up the nearest rock formation and hunkers down and covers her ears to block out the noise. There isn’t any fire to be found burning tonight, but he wails in the same way the jackrabbits do—Scarlett’s almost glad to hear it. Grandmother always did tell her to watch out for wolves. It seemed silly, at the time. Everyone knows that there aren’t any wolves in the desert.

It’s a girl’s voice that calls for her to come down after, says that it’s safe, asks if Scarlett is alright. Did she get there in time, or—

Scarlett lifts her head up and stares down at the girl, naked and bloody and older than she is, by the looks of things.

“No. He didn’t,” is all that Scarlett can say. “A coyote got him first.” She points down at the remains. The vultures are hovering above them already, abandoning their earlier meal for the prospects of something better. The girl looks up at the sky and Scarlett swears that she sees her bear her teeth and bark at them.

“I’ll walk you home, if you want,” the girl offers.

Scarlett wants.

She climbs down on shaky legs and retrieves her fallen basket, feebly making attempts to brush off the dirt and then gives up and chucks the bread at the corpse. The vultures can have it too for all that she cares. “Did you see the coyote?” she asks.

“Oh…” the girl goes all shifty. “Um, yeah.”

“Did he…” Scarlett nods over to her naked form, not quite sure how to ask.

“Oh,” the girl says, waving her hand and letting out a small, confusing laugh. “No. I’m… no. He didn’t. I’m fine.”

Scarlett offers up her ripped cloak and the girl smiles and wraps it around herself. They walk home side by side, hardly saying a word until Scarlett gathers up the courage to ask. “Did you see where it went?”

“What?”

“The coyote that saved me.”

The girl's face goes and does something strange, like she isn’t sure if she wants to tell Scarlett the truth or not. Something prickles in her brain. The stories her grandmother used to tell, about things that live out in the desert, things that aren’t human or animal. Not all the way. She looks at her naked body and almost asks, but today has been so awful already. Instead, she says, “What’s your name?”

“Ally.”

“I’m—” she starts to say _Scarlett_ but bristles at the sound of her own name, last spoken with a howl as someone hovered above her. “Red,” she says, instead. She’s not little anymore. Ally smiles.

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

She watches Ally walk into the desert donned in her ripped cape for a long, long time before she turns and goes back into the house. She doesn’t remember to ask Ally where she lives, or how she knew what was happening, or if—

There are far worse things in the desert than wolves, it seems.

…

…

Ally comes back and she has repaired her cloak, and made a new addition.

It’s still a brilliant bright red, but the hood is stitched into the shape of a wolf’s head, _to honor the first one that you ever beat_. Red blinks and doesn’t know what to say in response to that. She spends an achingly long year in Grandmother’s kitchen, kneading dough. Her fists ball up and she beats the dough into a thin flat line, when she pulls her hands back, her knuckles are bloody.

“Well, that won’t do,” says Grandmother, looking at the spots with sad eyes.

She sends Red outside and Ally is waiting for her out by the rocks, twisting flowers into a crown and whistling softly to herself. She nods over towards Red, keeps her distance, and then puts a dagger into her hands.

“Like this,” she says, and swings and throws.

Red gets lost in the rhythmic motion of it, the two of them silently hacking away at the saguaro that surrounds them. Red picks up the dagger and throws, stabs, hisses along with the whistle that adds to the wind. They spend weeks that way. Ally never asks about the day that she found her in the desert and Red’s hands grow calloused, her muscles strong. Grandmother finally allows her back into the kitchen. Red pauses and stares into the open oven, mitts covering her waiting hands. “Did you change the recipe? The loaves look different,” she says, tilting her head to try and find the cause of it.

“Well, it’s a different sort of you, looking,” Grandmother says, in that matter-of-fact way that she has. Red scoffs and pulls the bread roughly out of the oven. “That’s not how it works. Things don’t change how they are just because I’m different.”

Grandmother shrugs her boney shoulders, nonplussed, and orders Red about from her rocker beside the oven. Makes sure that the proper seasoning is dusted on, the right amount of salt, all the while Red glares down at the bread as if the world has gone and shifted without her consent.

…

…

“Was it you?” Red asks, jerking Ally out of her reverie.

“Was what me?” she says, wary, but Red can hear it in the tone of her voice, she knows exactly the question that Red is edging her way towards. She’s been trying to figure out how to ask it for well over a year, now.

“Just tell me,” she demands. “Please.”

Ally stares out into the valley, chin up, long brown hair whipping all around her and she jerks her head up and down into a nod, once. Red lets out a breath that’s been inside of her for years.

“How… are there… could I be one, too?”

Ally shakes her head. “That’s not how it works. You’re born one, or you’re not.” Red’s shoulders slump but Ally looks over and points at the dagger, at the muscles on Red’s body. “There are other ways, though.”

Red jerks her head up and down into a nod, once.

“Will you… show me?”

Ally looks like she knew this one was coming, like she’s been considering it for ages. Slowly, she stands up and starts peeling off her clothes, one by one. Red blushes when her shirt comes off, her breasts—bigger than Red’s—going hard from the slight chill of the wind. She’s beautiful. Red’s known that for a while, but…

She looks up at her eyes, holding her breath and waiting. Ally’s face slowly contorts as Red watches on and she thinks that it is very good that it’s just the two of them standing out in the empty valley, with no one else out here for miles, because Ally’s face is—no longer human. Nothing has changed, exactly; nothing tangible that Red could point to, except to say that it’s gone wrong, like the smell of something rotting out in the valley, waiting for the vultures to come circling. Red almost steps back from her, but it’s still just _Ally _standing in front of her—until it’s not. She shivers and hunches over, sudden and quick-like, and Red can see rusty-colored fur spilling out onto her back where nothing but sun-browned skin should be. It’s over in a blink. Her face changes, then there’s some fur, and then Ally is gone and a coyote is standing in front of Red, barking once before going silent and watchful.

“Fuck,” Red breathes out and she swears, the coyote smiles at her.

…

…

Grandmother kisses Red goodnight and then does not wake up again the next morning.

They’ve both known that this was coming for a long while, but Red is still shocked by it. Her mother is dead, her father has been long gone for years, Red isn’t little anymore, isn’t a child. And now, she’s all alone.

She walks to the edge of the valley at dusk, dagger clasped in her hand. Her feet freeze in the same spot as they have for nearly two years, rote memory. Something inside of Red bubbles over and she lets out a noise that could only be described as a howl. It echoes through the desert, waking it up. Something calls back to Red, and she howls again, purposeful this time. She tugs her hood up, covering her dark hair and bending down as she hears an animal approaching; a small gray wolf slowly crawls out from the rocks, wobbly and starving and mad, looking to tear its way through Red and then her cabin. Apparently, Grandmother did know something that she didn’t. Maybe, there are wolves in the desert. Or maybe, she is starting to lose it. Red swallows thickly and then conjures up something animalistic and feral from inside of her, and lunges.

When it’s all over she looks down at the dead thing as she pants, bloody and shaking, with a mixture of horror and pride.

Red readjusts her grip on the dagger, tilts her head back and howls as she runs out into the wild.

…

…

For the first year that she spends on her own, Red lives amongst the saguaro in a tent that she crafts herself. Owns nothing more than what she can pack up and carry on her back. There’s no reason to go back to an empty dank cabin, the smell of freshly baked bread long since gone.

She leaves a note for Ally, just in case.

_I’m sorry. Thank you. Thank you so, so much. _ <strike> _ I want_ </strike>

She doesn’t know what else to add, how to explain the weight of it, so she doesn’t try to, just tapes the note to the door and runs. 

She tracks and kills nine more of the wolves out of some half-baked retribution, hunting them down to prove to herself that she isn’t imagining things. (Though, as she washes the blood off her arms, and strips the animal down for meat, she’s not _sure _that it proves anything, really). By the third wolf, she is pretty sure that she’s not imaging things, or, she's stopped caring, if she is. Instead, she focuses on the fact that with the proper seasoning—pilfered from Grandmother’s kitchen, intended for nothing more than bread—wolves can taste a bit like vindication. Red chases the cactus path from village to village until she no longer knows how to find her way back home and has run out of both her Grandmother’s seasoning and wolves to kill.

She leaves bloody trails behind every village that she passes through; wolf’s blood, man’s blood, sometimes even her own. Whispers follow her too. Sometimes, she’ll wander into a town—bush twigs tangled in her hair, dirt, and blood caked underneath her fingernails—and hear them whispering about the girl in the red hood. The monster hunter. Fear and awe twinkling in their eyes.

Red ignores them all. She barters her way into fresh apples, bread that tastes nothing like Grandmother’s, and warmer clothes for the winter months. She trades with meat. With favors. Women in the villages find her in alleyways, their eyes flickering with fear, voices low and shaky as they plead for her help.

Red encounters men with Cheshire grins, lingering eyes, wolf whistles, and strong arms. Sometimes, they hear the whispers that follow her as well, but only ever second hand, only in jest. None of them take her seriously until her knife pierces its way into their skin.

Red helps as many of the women as she can, picking up some strange cause that Ally began for her, years ago. Those that she can’t, she leaves with the knowledge that they’re not alone, that others have endured and then survived these things too; they can cause their own ripples, somehow. Self-preservation is an instinct, after all. Grandmother always said that Red was born screaming—she knew from that moment that her instincts would be spot-on.

She meets some more people like Ally—a wolf she had been about to hack into dinner shifts, rippling fur and then turns into a young boy, holding up his hands and begging for her to stop. Red pauses, dagger at the ready and stares. He’s younger than she is, maybe close to the age when she met Ally, and the dagger falls from her hand.

“Sorry,” she stammers, “I thought you were… something else.”

He cracks a smile, innocent, and offers to put her up for the night. “My grandmother won’t mind,” he says, sending a shiver down Red’s spine.

She doesn’t, in the end. She’s wary of a young woman with calloused hands and a cloak of blood-red, wolf’s fur as the hood, dagger and everything that she owns in a single rucksack, but she doesn’t mind. The boy is called Bailey, and the Grandmother says, _you can call me June, _in a way that indicates it’s probably not her name, but that asking for a different one wouldn’t be appropriate. June fixes up the couch for Red and Bailey bounds around her, offering up food and blankets and looking like an overexcited puppy in a way that makes Red smile. It’s nice, to fall asleep to the hum of other voices moving about, to wake up and smell breakfast cooking in the kitchen. It clenches something tight inside Red’s chest, painful, but good at the same time.

Bailey is all folded, coltish limbs at the breakfast table and Red grows fonder of the boy every minute that she spends with him, but she’s antsy in this small cottage, unused to living inside with people, these days. Bailey offers to go for a run with her and Red almost tells him no, almost packs up her things and runs and runs and runs back out into the wild, where she belongs, but June gives her a sideways look that says she knows what Red is thinking. She holds out a bit of bread, freshly baked—she couldn’t possibly know—but Red sprints outside, Bailey at her heels, bread that tastes nothing like her Grandmother’s sitting in her gut.

She’s miles and years and full states away from home, but when she runs alongside Bailey—a boy who can turn into a wolf—she finds Ally again.

It’s not _quite _that simple, but, it’s close enough.

Bailey and June tell tales to Red, fables passed down through centuries of family. Ghost tales. Warnings of the things that white men can do, stories of beasts and men and people, stories that are familiar and foreign all at once, as Red sits in their living room and helps June polish her silver when she asks. One of the stories ends up explaining Bailey’s gift.

And Ally’s, as it turns out.

They say the name _Allison _and _coyote _and _cousin _and Red goes stiff and stops breathing. Bailey doesn’t notice, but June does. Of all the goddamn people for her to finally trust and shack up with… Red lets out a bitter, panicked laugh and shoves the mediocre bread into her mouth to keep herself from crying.

She almost runs, that night. She packs her things and stands out on the porch and wraps her cloak around her shoulders, but—

Something howls out in the night, and this time, she doesn’t run out to fight it.

…

…

Ally shows up about a week and a half later.

Part of Red had been almost expecting this, once she saw the excited look split onto Bailey’s face as Red mentioned that she knew her. But, she hadn’t been _sure. _

It’s been six years since Red has seen her last, and she still stands, graceful and lithe and beautiful as ever. There’s a small crooked smile that slips onto her face when she catches sight of Red, but she holds herself back and waits until Red gives her some sort of signal. Bailey is vibrating to her left and he can’t wait anymore—he runs past Red and launches himself into his cousin’s arms. She catches him with a laugh and ruffles his hair, her gaze drifting back towards Red, like she can’t quite help it. Some part of Red blushes, deep and violet and it flutters inside her gut. She swallows to press it down.

“Hey,” she says, low.

“Hi, Red,” Ally says, voice like velvet.

It’s almost that easy.

…

…

Ally settles into the small cottage like she belongs, which, of course, she _does. _This is her family. Her home. Red is the stranger that came out from the desert, now.

She goes all prickly, on edge. She tucks her knees up to her chest and clutches the mug of tea that June pushes into her hands and tries to breathe. Bailey is going about a mile a minute, chattering away about some science project he’s been working on in school, the last run that he went on, some movie that he saw, anything and everything. Ally listens to him, fond and attentive. June chimes in when it pleases her, cutting sideways looks over at Red every once in a while.

Ally is cutting looks over her way, too. Loaded, heavy things that close up Red’s throat and make her want to launch herself at Ally with all the same vigor that Bailey did. She balls her hands into tight fists that leave red fingernail marks in the palms of her hands, when she finally unfolds them.

“Shit,” she mutters, into the tiny bathroom. Red splashes water onto her face and walks out to the couch, unsurprised to find Ally, sitting on her makeshift bed, waiting for her.

“Hi,” she says, looking… almost shy.

“Hi,” Red answers. “Um… I had no idea that...” she waves her hands around the tiny cottage. Ally laughs, a real one; bright and full and deep. It leaves a pinkish hue to her cheeks that has Red squirming and wanting to grab her things and run.

“Yeah,” she finally says, “I figured that. I’m glad you stumbled on them, though. It’s good to see you again.”

“You too,” Red croaks. “I didn’t mean to… I left you a note.”

Ally smiles down into her lap. “I got it.”

Neither of them says anything, after that. Finally, Red forces her limbs forward and lowers herself down onto the couch beside Ally. She feels her tense and finds herself surprised by it, but Ally relaxes a second later, so Red tries to, too. Their shoulders aren’t touching, nor their thighs; they’re both trying real hard to keep themselves separate on this tiny couch, trying to give each other space.

Ally is the one that breaks it; she’s always been braver, surer of herself. “I’ve heard about you,” she says. “Over the years. I didn’t know it was _you, _but,” she shrugs. “Little Red Riding Hood. I had an inkling, but I wasn’t _sure._ Not till Bailey called me.”

“I looked for you,” Red says, spitting it out like it’s been pressing at the back of her throat for hours. “I mean… not like, actively, but… I never killed any coyotes unless it was self-defense. Unless I _knew. _I—”

Ally reaches her hand over and takes Red’s, slow, careful, giving her plenty of time to tug herself away or tell her to stop. Red doesn’t say a word in protest. Ally laces their fingers together, her thumb starting to rub back and forth on the back of Red’s palm, sending shivers down Red’s spine. The good kind. The kind that screams: _want._

“I looked for you, too,” Ally whispers.

“My grandmother always said that there were wolves in the desert, but, I never believed her,” Red admits, her voice so low, she’s not sure if Ally can hear her. She says nothing in response, just keeps rubbing her thumb back and forth on Red’s hand, the rhythm of it drifting Red into a calm relaxed state. Different, but similar to the way Ally showed her how to wield a dagger. The two of them, calm and steady and letting the rhythm guide them. Red doesn’t want to run, anymore. She wants to lean into Ally and fill this cottage up with the smell of her grandmother’s bread. She wants to go running with Bailey at her heels. She wants to love the desert again.

Red turns her face towards Ally’s, the heavy weight of an unnamed big bad wolf hoovering, constantly behind her, floats away and disappears into the night. “You can call me Scarlett,” she whispers, like a sigh, reclaiming herself into the night. Ally grins, pressing her shoulders close against Scarlett’s.

Something howls from out in the desert, and Scarlett feels her lips twitch; if not a ghost of a smile, then certainly the ghost’s cousin. 


End file.
